


That Was My Hope

by Naome



Category: Vindictus
Genre: Angst, Major Spoilers, Spoilers, one-hundred percent angst, post-Season 1 storyline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 22:17:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4496796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naome/pseuds/Naome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Season 1 storyline for Vindictus/Mabinogi: Heroes in Lynn's point-of-view.</p><p>A year had passed since the arrival of Erinn had been confirmed in the worst way possible. Left with almost nothing once again just as when she was forced to flee her kingdom, Lynn fights with her resentment towards the world in order to find the strength and a reason to keep moving forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Was My Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers for Season 1's storyline. Please don't read if you haven't completed those quests yet (do those raids!!)
> 
> This is like 100% angst.

                Underneath the swelling skies that looked as if its gray clouds were about to burst into tears, I held my gaze towards what was in front of me. I kneeled forward, taking in every second of the sight before me. For a few seconds, the fresh cuts on my legs, arms, face, all over my body stung, yet these small shocks of pain were drowned out by the disbelief and awe churning in my chest as I witnessed that scene.

  
                The arrival of Erinn was a reality; it was real, and it will happen. Yet, it was such a grim reality as I watched, with a mix of horror, confusion, and reverence, as Tieve disappeared from our world. When her flowing blond hair turned, from their very roots, into the black of a crow’s feathers, my mouth gaped a little. This was what destiny intended to happen. This is what destiny had decided for Tieve.

  
                She was the true oracle of the goddess Morrighan, yet what should have been blissful news only became ill tidings as they occurred after Keaghan’s grotesque transformation. Blindly in rage and in intense love for Tieve, he carried out the other half of the story destiny had written so long ago. I could not make out his face anymore as it was obscured by a great hood. On his back were white wings. Opposite to Tieve’s divine awakening, he had fallen to become a vessel for Cichol, the God of the Fomors.

  
                All I could do was sit there astonished and robbed completely of any words or any sense. I had no power to prevent this outcome. I never had. As the mercenary who had risen so high only to fall so greatly to becoming a fugitive and a heretic in the eyes of the corrupt Pontiff’s Court, who had done so much to save the people she had befriended and loved, who had done so much to bring Erinn to this world, no matter how sour the path is now, could do absolutely nothing as I was forced to watch Tieve disappear forever.

  
                The scene, the one I’ve replayed countless times when I sleep, cuts out into a deep black. Nothing. There was nothing. Within seconds, however, voices would flood my head.

  
                “What use is Erinn if it entails that you lose everything in the process?” one voice echoed, thickened with bitterness and resentment. I could not recognize whose voice it was, only that it was a voice.

  
                I desperately tried to open my eyelids, to open my eyes towards the blinding lights of reality. I could feel myself thrash wildly in my bed in an attempt to escape this replayed nightmare. It was a fight I had to repeat and one that I will continue to repeat until the end of time.

  
                “First your mother and the kingdom, then your friends. Now you’ve lost Tieve as well. What use is paradise if you had to go through hells to get it for people who won’t even thank you for your work?”

  
                Finally, with a horrid gasp, I jolted upright in my bed. The woolen covers were thrown onto the ground and my nightclothes were soaked with sweat. My forehead felt heavy and as I looked at my shaking arms, I immediately felt the deep regret swelling within my chest.

  
                I woke up. What an unfortunate event to happen. To wake up to the world that has forgotten about me and that has forgotten so much about the Tieve it loved so dearly, it is still too much even if a year has passed.

  
                It took a few seconds to focus my blurry vision to the window to my left. Snow was gently falling outside. I shook my head, already feeling the small pools of resentment inside of me gathering into a large ocean to make my heart ache painfully for another day.

  
                It was a completely different Colhen, not the one which I wanted to save. Yet, even if I wanted to curse it for being a shadow of its former self, paradise, Erinn, will arrive to take it away. Every day, since that day, I walked through the streets and would meet greetings from people who knew my name but who essentially forgot about me.

  
                Times were simple, just like the time before the events at Ainle, at Fobellow Prairie, at Rocheste, at the dark heart of the Catacombs ever happened, now. The snow silently fell on a town where one would only here a murmur of mundane conversations and hushed worries of the next Fomorian attack.

  
                Clodagh and Marrec do not remember any of my heroic feats. Not even Aodhan remembers his great mentor who was Ingkells. The world that Tieve and Keaghan had left me behind in was this huge farce of what was good before and it was slowly suffocating me every day. In my heart, I had to carry their memories with no one else to confirm their previous presence, their fleeting smiles, and their moments when hope glimmered in their eyes or when despair confounded them.

  
                There was no one left in this world to remember those moments as they happened in my life. When Tieve and Keaghan left, they left with my own fleeting moments, some which I cherished and others I wished so hard to forget. No one else remembers.

  
                As I stared at the snow falling outside and bathed myself in such thoughts, I realized for the first time ever since Tieve had left our world to go to Erinn that I was completely alone. I gulped hard. Tears began forming in my eyes and my hands began to tremble.

  
                I had been left behind in a world that also has abandoned me. All I had left were good memories that would only haunt me and bitterness at what the world had to give back to me, the mercenary who wanted to save it.

  
                I decided. On the winds that would carry themselves into town once in awhile, I had heard about a new place called Malina. Its environment was completely different, as if it was in a whole other realm compared to the backwater town of Colhen. To save myself and to begin my healing, I decided to make my way there.

  
                Being away from the snow and away from this hollow Colhen would help me. Just as what had happened to my kingdom, I had to press on and to find a new story to write. There were things I still had to do. I began to gather my things and headed out. I did not even greet the new oracle.

  
                Before I left, I headed to the temple which Tieve frequented. Upon the foot of the goddess statue, I placed a handkerchief which she gave to me a long time ago after I returned from my first mission in Ainle.

  
                “I hope that we meet again, Tieve,” I whispered to the air around me. I stood up and headed towards the docks outside of Colhen.

  
                To Malina, I go. To Malina, I went. Perhaps I will find a world there which will not abandon me and will protect me just as I had protected the old world with such ferocity and determination.

  
                That was my hope.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't finished Season 2 myself, but I do know how it ends. As for Season 3, I have no idea what it holds for us. This work is part of a bigger project I have in the makings.


End file.
